Thanks for promoting the adoption of homeless pets. It saddens me to know that there are people out there that can look a helpless and affectionate puppy in the eye and then leave them by the side of the road. Just this past month someone I knew had a puppy dumped on their property and they fed it, but were going to re-dump it if nobody took it. They justified it to themselves as giving him a fighting chance by feeding him before 'letting him go'. In TX that just means he's a fatter coyote meal. So knowing he had nowhere to go, and never having fostered a dog before, we took him in and contacted the local humane society. Long story short, he was the happiest puppy we'd ever met and he did more for other other two dogs' socialization (also rescues) than 100 days at the dog park ever did. As of last week, he has moved in to his forever home and we wish him a happy life, but won't forget him. Seeing the effort the humane society volunteers put into saving the lives of even the biggest, most intimidating, potential lifelong friends was truly the remedy I needed for the circumstances by which we began working with them. These dogs all met with an unfortunate situation and have no hope of understanding why, just that someone cares enough to feed them and tend to their needs. Thank you so much for helping save the lives that a segment of the population sees as somehow undeserving.

First of all, the riff on the replicator request made me laugh for longer than I care to admit here. Secondly, next stop gnocchi. (There's lots o' potato peel'n, but it's remarkably easy if you're wearing a glove or using a towel to hold the potato to peel them after they've been boiled. The skin just falls off.) Lastly, I'm making this next chance I get! Thanks man!

I was in elementary school. They wheeled a television out and class stopped. It wasn't until I became an aerospace engineer that I learned that it never should have happened. What happened was a near certainty and it was a massive moral and ethical violation to allow it. I maintain the desperate hope, recently booned by Virgin Galactic, that we will press on. Once more into the void, because we must; because it could one day preserve our species; because it is the moral thing to do for a species that is capable to do so while it is overpopulating a planet; because without this progress, our knowledge may one day stagnate; because those that have died in the pursuit of spaceflight should not have done so in vain; because it may give children a reason to dream. This was a great post Wil. Thanks.

*process by WHICH heavier elements are created. :-\

What I love about that statement in that song is what it really means. It's not talking about the structure of the atoms or how they work. "The way those atoms are put together" refers to the process by why heavier elements are created, starting with Helium from Hydrogen. An entire star has to have ignited and spent its fuel in the creation of heavier elements, then given its body to the universe as a supernova. It's an incredible, inconceivably large, beautiful, and tragic process that provided the carbon that makes up our bodies.